How Test Automation Can Help Your Business
Very often, test automation is seen as a technical topic. If you’re concerned about the bottom line and how you can tweak certain institutional knobs to produce bigger returns from smaller investments, instituting test automation isn’t exactly the first order of business.
However, test automation is much more than just the specific tools, frameworks, or programming languages that allow it to improve the overall quality of your software. According to Kalyan Konda, the president and business head at Gallop Solutions, you need to go a level above the technical terminology to understand the value of test automation.
“The software testing or software test automation initiatives have to be funded. Which means that it is all about efficiency, and the returns we are able to generate from these test automation initiatives,” he explains in an interview with StickyMinds. “I would say that test automation, to start with, has to be a business topic. If it does not generate enough returns, it doesn't make sense to automate.”
Test automation has to start as a business topic—where your team or organization keeps the many steps, investments, and benefits in mind as the processes are instituted. It’s still critical to balance the technical makeup with the business surrounding it, but to simply look at it as a technical solution is missing a major point.
And the nature of software, from how it’s developed to how it’s tested, will continue to change as the Internet of Things further breaks into the mainstream. As more and more objects become embedded with systems, the need for more comprehensive testing will rise.
The user experience is expanding, and that’s where test automation can be an invaluable solution.
“You have the hardware that is actually providing a response, a message to the software based on the input and the software is doing whatever it's supposed to do. And the Internet of Things there is quite a bit of a human response to both software and hardware,” Konda continues. “Through voice and touch, and things like that. Which means that to be able to simulate the entire flow that connects across hardware and software, makes it really unique.”
Test automation is an investment in the future of software and how we test it, but it’s also an integral part of how successful testing teams are doing business right now. From both a technical and business outlook, test automation can be a major piece in any organizational puzzle.
